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How do we broaden our sense of what matters in times of conflict?

I am a practitioner in the fields of both conflict engagement and choreography. Working at this intersection, I have come to see that any view of the world is a snapshot of attention: what is left aside, what is taken in.

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In conflict, our attention is often primarily on the gestures of attack and defense. The full range of gesture through which we are constantly receiving and transmitting our experience of the human condition often goes unattended. The Dis/Agreement Project invites attention to this broader spectrum of human gesture, to expand our sense of what matters, beyond attack and defense, in times and places of conflict.

I started this project after noticing my own tendency to dehumanize people who hold political views that are in opposition to mine. I wondered: what would it be like to build, instead, a practice of remaining curious about these people with whom I disagree?

Nine artists from around the world joined me on the project. Each of us chose a topic important to us, found people that we agreed and disagreed with on that topic, and exchanged with them. First, through spoken conversations exploring why people believe what they do and then through physical conversations, responding with simple physical gestures to questions about how life feels. The gestures of the artists and their conversation partners– 47 people from 11 countries– were then transcribed into written and spoken language, creating choreographic distillations of experience to be again fleshed out into action by the minds of listeners and viewers.

What we pay attention to determines not only what we see, but what we are able to imagine is possible. When we enter a practice of humanization, we have a chance to illuminate the complexity of what matters in times of conflict and consider its possibilities as we collectively shape our world.

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Thank you for joining us.

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Dana